Wife guilty in bomb plot that killed husband

March 11, 2003|By John McCormick, Tribune staff reporter.

A federal jury Monday found Lisa Toney guilty of conspiring with her boyfriend to use a gift-wrapped pipe bomb to kill her husband, a verdict that is expected to translate into a prison term of life without the possibility of parole.

As the jury's foreman read the verdict, Constance Toney-Jackson sat near the front of the courtroom, wearing one of the blue work shirts her older brother frequently wore as a janitor at City Colleges of Chicago.

"I just wanted him to be here," she said later, proudly displaying her brother's name on a patch on the shirt. "I just wanted him to be with us."

As Toney-Jackson and other family members watched, U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle ordered Lisa Toney to be immediately taken into custody. She'll be sentenced in mid-May.

Marcus Toney, 37, died Feb. 15, 2000, when he and a friend opened a package containing a pipe bomb in his South Side apartment. The package had been gift wrapped at a department store.

In finding her guilty on all four charges, jurors agreed with prosecutors that Lisa Toney, 45, conspired with Sienky Lallemand to steal Marcus Toney's identity, acquire fraudulent credit cards under his name, steal his mail and kill him with the bomb.

"They were just having a great time at this guy's expense, and then they blow him up," said George Rees, the jury's foreman.

Rees said many jurors didn't believe Lisa Toney was being forthcoming when she testified late last week that she didn't remember many details about the days before and after her husband's death.

"She was very precise when her defense was asking questions, but got entirely vague [when prosecutors cross-examined her]," said Rees, an over-the-road trucker. "That kind of tipped it for a lot of people."

Rees said numerous phone calls between Lisa Toney and Lallemand, including more than a dozen while Lallemand was a fugitive, also were considered significant by many jurors. "That's not normal to keep talking to someone who killed your husband," he said.

Prosecutors said police and federal agents suspected Lisa Toney, a human resources manager for SBC Ameritech, was involved in her estranged husband's death almost immediately afterward.

Prosecutors had painted Lisa Toney as a greedy woman in a steamy affair with a man who knew how to defraud credit card companies for his own gain and to provide her with $7,000 diamond earrings, $1,600 hotel room stays and a down payment on a Mercedes Benz.

"Justice has been served," said Marcus Toney's mother, Mildred White, after leaving the courtroom.

During the trial, prosecutors said Lisa Toney and Lallemand had hoped to have a friend shoot Marcus Toney in January 2000 in the couple's home after Lisa Toney obtained an order of protection after a fight.

But prosecutors said the planned self-defense shooting failed when Marcus Toney never entered the couple's Dolton home.

The pair eventually plotted to blow him up after running up about $200,000 in credit card charges and later learning that he suspected them of stealing his identity, prosecutors said.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Lawrence Beaumont acknowledged after the verdict that the case against Lisa Toney was "very circumstantial" but said jurors were correct in connecting the dots.

"The law makes no distinction between circumstantial and direct evidence," he said.

Beaumont said he plans to ask that Lisa Toney be sentenced to life in prison without parole. The sentence will be in the hands of the judge, but he said sentencing guidelines call for that penalty.

Beaumont said Lisa Toney was the sixth and final individual to either be convicted or plead guilty in the case. Besides Lisa Toney and Lallemand, the others had minor roles in the conspiracy.